Fire/Cold vs. Magic Fire/Cold

Seriously. What is the difference between these two things? I noticed that many protection from fire/cold spells give like 100% resist to normal fire/cold and 50% resist to magic fire/cold but I don't get the difference. I know the spells say that magic fire/cold is from spells like fireball and cone of cold yet those spells are blocked 100% so they can't really be magic fire/cold damage sources... Are there even any magic fire/cold damage sources in BG1 (or BG2 for that matter)?

Seriously. What is the difference between these two things? I noticed that many protection from fire/cold spells give like 100% resist to normal fire/cold and 50% resist to magic fire/cold but I don't get the difference. I know the spells say that magic fire/cold is from spells like fireball and cone of cold yet those spells are blocked 100% so they can't really be magic fire/cold damage sources... Are there even any magic fire/cold damage sources in BG1 (or BG2 for that matter)?

Magical Fire and magical cold damage are not used in Baldur's Gate 2. The only one that is used is magic damage, which you can get reduction from valygars armor and belt of inertial barrier (And i'm sure some other items and spells/abilities i'm forgetting) . This reduces the damage you take from things like Magic missile, skull trap and abi.

Well, there's supposed to be a difference but, as @SionIV mentions, the magical variants aren't used for any actual damage in the game. They work fine inflicting damage, but if you die due to magical cold or fire the game crashes.

The whole magical/non-magical fire discussion is a rules lawyer wet dream anyway. When you cast fireball are you summoning magical fire? Or simply creating combustibles that result in regular fire? The current setup lets us avoid the 14 pages of citations from the PHB, Ravenloft, Next, the Necronomicon, and My Pet Goat that will inevitably follow.

Would also like to quote this from an old Social bioware thread, written by Saros_Shadow_Follower.

"There are several types of magical damage in BG2, and several types of physical damage as well. The magical types of damage are: Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid, Magic Damage. The sixth type of magical damage is Poison. Your resistances on the character sheet should give you some info about the types of resistances. There are spells which protect vs each of the magical damage types, except Poison - for which there are five vanilla items (possibly more if you play with an item upgrade mod).

Physical damage has 4 different categories too - slashing, piercing, crushing and missile. Actually, missile fire is a subtype of piercing damage (meaning, if you have 50% piercing damage resistance, this will absorb 50% of damage your character takes from missile fire too, but if you have 50% missile damage resistance, this won't stop any of the damage dealt to you by piercing weapons such as spears or short swords)."

And there are no spells in the game that deal 'Magical Fire' or 'Magical Cold'

Would also like to quote this from an old Social bioware thread, written by Saros_Shadow_Follower.

"There are several types of magical damage in BG2, and several types of physical damage as well. The magical types of damage are: Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid, Magic Damage. The sixth type of magical damage is Poison. Your resistances on the character sheet should give you some info about the types of resistances. There are spells which protect vs each of the magical damage types, except Poison - for which there are five vanilla items (possibly more if you play with an item upgrade mod).

Physical damage has 4 different categories too - slashing, piercing, crushing and missile. Actually, missile fire is a subtype of piercing damage (meaning, if you have 50% piercing damage resistance, this will absorb 50% of damage your character takes from missile fire too, but if you have 50% missile damage resistance, this won't stop any of the damage dealt to you by piercing weapons such as spears or short swords)."

And there are no spells in the game that deal 'Magical Fire' or 'Magical Cold'

Would also like to quote this from an old Social bioware thread, written by Saros_Shadow_Follower.

"There are several types of magical damage in BG2, and several types of physical damage as well. The magical types of damage are: Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid, Magic Damage. The sixth type of magical damage is Poison. Your resistances on the character sheet should give you some info about the types of resistances. There are spells which protect vs each of the magical damage types, except Poison - for which there are five vanilla items (possibly more if you play with an item upgrade mod).

Physical damage has 4 different categories too - slashing, piercing, crushing and missile. Actually, missile fire is a subtype of piercing damage (meaning, if you have 50% piercing damage resistance, this will absorb 50% of damage your character takes from missile fire too, but if you have 50% missile damage resistance, this won't stop any of the damage dealt to you by piercing weapons such as spears or short swords)."

And there are no spells in the game that deal 'Magical Fire' or 'Magical Cold'

An "insightful" for you.

Wish i could pass it on to Saros on the old forum, but thank you nonetheless

Evocation is created entirely of magic energy, Invocation is non-magical, since it's bringing something from somewhere else. The though even I agree the difference between can get really murky, especially since a lot of spells don't have proper type flags, or were altered to streamline BG's system.

Generally, any high power effect, like fireballs will be evocation, since it's difficult to think up where the explosion could be called from. On the other hand, simple flames can some times be invocation, called from the plane of fire to light something, but doesn't sustain it requiring proper fuel, while evocation would continue to fuel the flames with magic. Call Flames, if memory serves, is invocation. It just deals 1d6 non-magical fire damage, and if the target is wearing flammable material (or is something like a large pile of brush or the like), will set said material on fire, which continues to burn for as long as it has enough fuel or until snuffed.

Cloud kill is one of those spells that has cause a lot of discussion in the past. The PnP version is more clear. It's part the Evocation school, but Invocation sub-school. It calls a cloud of toxic gas from else where, and that's it. The gas acts in all ways like a heavy toxic gas normally would, dissipating depending on wind or other conditions. The gas is non-magical, and works via any form of contact (Physical, inhalation, or ingestion), unless the creature has some form of general poison immunity or is wearing an amulet of adaptation or the like which surrounds the target in a thin barrier of clean air that prevents contact with the gas.

The BG version version is just listed as evocation, and stays in the radius it's cast for a set time, before dissipating and is prevented by successful magic resistance checks per round (but not spell protections, making it fairly devastating vs most non-drow casters/liches). That said, the duration is roughly the same as the time it would take for a weak breeze to disperse the cloud, so it technically performs almost the same as the PnP version, BG just doesn't account for wind speeds and the cloud doesn't move.

It might be best to simplify the game mechanics to just eliminate the distinction between Fire/Cold and Magic Fire/Cold. To me fire is a particular compound with oxygen and cold is a physical drop in temperature in the environment, and whether these are caused by physical or magical means they result in the same thing. I think making the situation more complex in the game adds very little. This is especially so when people who are known as experts in the game still have to argue it with each other.

Would also like to quote this from an old Social bioware thread, written by Saros_Shadow_Follower.

Actually, missile fire is a subtype of piercing damage (meaning, if you have 50% piercing damage resistance, this will absorb 50% of damage your character takes from missile fire too, but if you have 50% missile damage resistance, this won't stop any of the damage dealt to you by piercing weapons such as spears or short swords)."

Ok, sorry for necromancing this thread, but could someone actually confirm this behavior in BG(2)EE? If missile fire is indeed a subtype of piercing damage, how about a thrown hammers, for instance, which deal crushing damage in melee. Following this info, they should deal piercing damage when thrown, but this seems illogical to me. The same goes for thrown axes (slashing damage in melee). Even sling bullets logically should deal crushing damage as well.

Logic tells me, that missile should be separate type of damage, therefore I need a confirmation of intel taken from Bioware forum.

@Cahir‌ What SionIV‌ said was incorrect. Missile is its own type of damage and is not actually a subtype of piercing. There are 4 basic types of damage: Slashing, crushing, piercing, and missile. Though missile damage is often grouped together with piercing they are actually separate damage types. Resistance to piercing does not also give a missile resistance. Mustard jellies, for instance, have a 100% peircing damage resistance but only have an 80% missile damage resistance.

There are other types of damage in the engine but they are rarely, if ever, actually used in the game. One of the ones that is used is slashing+piercing damage. This is used by all halberds. In the case of this damage type the game uses whichever one is better in terms of hitting and damaging the opponent.

All player usable ranged weapons in the game do missile damage. There are some creature only ranged weapons that do crushing damage instead (such as a mustard jelly's attack) but this is rare.

Sorry for reviving this as well, but I ran into this as well. I think I can clarify as well as get some answers on for me as well.

I honestly thing Devs just lifted Descriptions from PnP and never bothered(or just abandoned through creation) to put in Fire/Magic Fire. Fire would be putting your hand in a fire place of a tavern or running through a burning building. Cold is like standing naked in a blizzard and being unaffected by it. Magic Fire and Cold is from actual casters and such. Which draws extra energy and punch.

So was this ever updated and put in with the EE? Cause I have 100 Fire Resist and then 40 Magic Fire Resist(I think it falls on the Ring of Fire Resist where I am getting Magic Fire from)

@CamDawgI do not understand various Protection from Fire/Cold spell descriptions (26158; 30213; 30215; etc.).What does it mean complete protection from normal damage (torches; snow) and partial protection from magical damage?Are there normal fire/cold damage in the game (arrows; explosive potions)?

Shouldn't Beamdog make spell texts cleaner with only gameplay references?

Nothing in the game causes magical fire or cold damage--it's all regular fire or cold damage. The original game did this because death via magical cold or fire damage would crash the game. EE fixes that bug, but still leaves everything as regular fire or cold damage.

The bits in the spell descript is just leftover copy-and-paste from their PnP descriptions. Protection spells provide an x% reduction in fire/cold damage regardless of source.

i've reported non-corresponding description bugs in the past but this is not it because the descriptions are correct and complete, it's just that there's an extraneous element. whether and how much it is confusing to new players is attested to by how much people have complained about this over the years, and that is - very little.